Introduction
Providing great customer service and experience is crucial to remain competitive in this highly evolving telco industry. As of 3Q 2021, Malaysia is estimated to have 46.4 million subscribers with 13.96 million post paid and 32.44 million pre-paid subscribers. However, out of all multimedia offerings in Malaysia,
82% of complaint come from the telecommunications pillar
There is a strong need for Malaysian telco leaders to move away from delivering mediocre services to crafting memorable experiences at all customer touchpoints. Companies that are able to orchestrate customer experiences by providing hyper-personalised and digitalised services will emerge as leaders in the telecom industry.
Twimbit reviewed the entire customer journey from signing-up for the service to activation and post-sales support to benchmark the telecom service providers.
With this study, twimbit aims to help telecom leaders like you create a customer-centric journey. We highlight the initiatives by leading Malaysian telco providers in six customer experience benchmark parameters that help build high value customer relationship
Methodology
Step 1
We opened real accounts and enrolled for the basic pre-paid plan with Malaysia’s top 8 telcos – Hotlink, Celcom, Yoodo, Digi, Umobile, OneXOX, Yes4G, and Unifi mobile in the month of August 2021.
Step 2
We developed a framework to conduct a detailed evaluation and finalise rankings. The framework assesses how a telcos performed based on 6 parameters and 23 sub-parameters, capturing 3 key customer experience milestones vital in delivering a stellar customer experience (Table 1).
Step 3
We score each telco on a scale of 1 to 5 based on convenience, accessibility, and uniqueness
Purchase
| Telcos | Score |
| Yoodo | 4.0 |
| Hotlink | 3.8 |
| Digi | 3.8 |
| U Mobile | 3.8 |
| Yes4G | 3.8 |
| Celcom | 3.6 |
| ONE XOX | 3.4 |
| Unifi Mobile | 3.0 |
We measured each telcos ability to provide sufficient information revolving around their prepaid plans. This information is key to customers that are looking for prepaid plans and enables them to choose their plans without the need for FAQs or customer service support. Reflecting this, Malaysian telcos, in general, provide basic information on internet data, SMS, and calls. Furthermore, each telco also provides information regarding available add-ons.
A challenge observed in half of the telcos involved was a separation between the price of the SIM card and the plan, which caused confusion during purchasing.
Yoodo, Digi, U Mobile and Unifi Mobile are transparent about their pricing and include no hidden charges. These SIM cards were bought, activated and used instantly without worrying about additional charges. ONE XOX, Yes 4G, Celcom, and Hotlink does not convey extra charges for the SIM card pack on the pricing page. Customers were only aware of the additional charges during checkout. Also, ONE XOX, Yes 4G, Celcom, and Hotlink prepaid plans were only able to be purchased through their mobile applications, which requires the topping up of e-wallets, causing further price charges.
Delivery
| Telcos | Score |
| Yoodo | 5.0 |
| Celcom | 5.0 |
| Hotlink | 5.0 |
| ONE XOX | 5.0 |
| U Mobile | 5.0 |
| YES 4G | 5.0 |
| Digi | 4.7 |
| Unifi Mobile | 4.7 |
All telcos practice easy and direct delivery. Utilising delivery through motorcycles directly to stated locations has levelled Malaysia’s playing field – all eight telcos leverage this delivery method. On the most basic level of delivery feature, the average amount of time taken for a telco to deliver their SIM card is between 1-3 days after purchase. Certain telcos provide alternate delivery times with a fixed price.
Activation
| Telcos | Score |
| Digi | 4.7 |
| U Mobile | 4.7 |
| Hotlink | 4.7 |
| Celcom | 4.7 |
| ONE XOX | 4.7 |
| YES 4G | 4.7 |
| Yoodo | 4.0 |
| Unifi Mobile | 3.7 |
The majority of telcos conduct the same activation processes involving identification cards and facial recognition. However, telcos made this process easy to understand, requiring little to no documents, and SIM cards are instantly activated when the process is complete. On average, the most steps taken in activating a SIM card ranges from 5-8 steps.
Unifi Mobile did not explicitly indicate the number of steps and complexity of activating the SIM card, causing a challenging experience. It takes you through a multitude of steps and pages to finally finish the activation that happens with self-discovery rather than a simple chronological process. This ruins the experience and prolong the time taken to use the SIM card. Hotlink, Celcom, Yoodo, ONE XOX, Yes 4G and Unifi Mobile requires personal verification by using an identification card and creating an account, whilst the rest did not.
Design experience
| Telcos | Score |
| Hotlink | 4.3 |
| Yoodo | 4.0 |
| Digi | 3.7 |
| U Mobile | 3.3 |
| Yes 4G | 3.3 |
| ONE XOX | 3.0 |
| Celcom | 3.0 |
| Unifi Mobile | 2.7 |
Telcos who can get their customers to engage with their mobile application by reloading credits, purchasing add-on features and carrying out e-commerce-related purchases will win customer loyalty. These features, coupled with clear directions and fast loading speed in between pages, allows a better user experience in the long run.
An observation seen from telcos is that they follow their colour scheme closely with slight variance. We see that priority lies in the importance of easy navigation and information accessibility, outweighing aesthetics and visual presentations of information. We observed Yoodo to have a visually different aesthetic design compared to the other telcos. However, navigating through their application proved difficult and causes confusion,
at times involving information searches on the data plan itself.
Innovation of services
| Telcos | Score |
| Hotlink | 2.7 |
| Celcom | 2.7 |
| ONE XOX | 2.7 |
| Yoodo | 2.3 |
| Digi | 2.3 |
| U Mobile | 2.3 |
| Yes 4G | 1.3 |
| Unifi Mobile | 1.0 |
Easy reload systems with access to different reloading methods and customisable amounts encourage users to top up using the application. By allowing different reloading methods, users gain points on their preferred e-wallet or online banking platforms. Multiple features enable customers to access services beyond core network to a third-party lifestyle marketplace.
Online banking, credit cards, e-wallets, and inter-user credit reloads are common among the telcos. Telcos leverage on prefixed reload sums (e.g. USD 2.39, USD 4.78, USD 11.95), pushing customers to reload more than they need. For instance, if a plan’s price is at USD 9.56, a customer must reload USD 11.95 to buy the plan. The other half of the telcos allow customisable reload amounts.
One XOX stood above the rest for its marketplaces as it provides a vast variety of products on its mobile application
All telcos lack in gamification; the ability to earn loyalty points, level up profiles, lucky draws, and many more gamification features have not seen adoption across these Malaysian telcos. Implementing a points and progression system provides a gamification element to the application, which can motivate users to engage continuously. Tying rewards with the marketplace further strengthens a user’s motivation to keep interacting with the platform.
Customer service and self-help
| Telcos | Score |
| Yoodo | 3.0 |
| Hotlink | 2.8 |
| ONE XOX | 2.5 |
| Digi | 2.5 |
| Celcom | 2.5 |
| U Mobile | 2.3 |
| Yes 4G | 2.0 |
| Unifi Mobile | 1.5 |
Seven out of 8 of the telcos involved in this research highly depend on their call operators, while Yoodo does not implement any call operator support systems. Instead, it provides a highly efficient and reliable live chatbot with a telco representative. Live chats are highly informative on the waiting time, whilst the call operator support systems are highly convenient and heavily adopted in Malaysia, but both provide quick solutions.
Response time observed from the telcos came up with less than 15 minutes taken starting from the submission of the problem, to the solution. The longest time taken to resolve an issue was more than 2 hours, involving the deactivation of a SIM card through Facebook Live Chat, whilst the shortest time taken was 5 minutes in solving lost SIM card issues.
We saw post customer support to be lacking in the telcos. Only one telco provides post customer support, calling the number directly 10 minutes post solution. Post customer support is essential in ensuring reliability and importance towards customers whilst providing seamless resolution.
Conclusion
Out of the 8 telcos, Hotlink took took the lead in Design experience, and Innovation of services. The areas which they exemplify in are superior design experience and investing in consistent customer experience throughout all the pillars.
Telcos are increasingly dependent on non-connectivity revenues for their growth in Malaysia. Many of the them will evolve to become SUPER-APPS where they integrate payment, content, connectivity, and other services in partnership with third-party companies. This will require them to build a powerful customer experience platform. Improving engagement rates will become a critical measure of success.
Therefore, it is imperative for Malaysia telecom service providers like you to focus on curating an engaging and frictionless digital journey that highlights your brand values to target a larger segment of the market and increase customer acquisition and retention rates. Our analyst team sees four distinct opportunities for you to create a customer experience journey that is superior:
